Happenings

Written by United Way of Greater Los Angeles, in partnership with Inner City Law Center and Abundant Housing LA, and provided to LA2050 as part of its mid-year report.

United Way's Everyone In campaign is committed to educating and activating 100,000 residents across LA County to connect the dots between housing affordability and our current homelessness crisis. There are more than 52,000 people experiencing homelessness and thousands more who are just one paycheck, crisis, or emergency away from losing their home. The high cost of housing, stagnant wages, and lack of affordable units only exacerbate the problem. We need to build more supportive housing and bring in those that are at most risk of dying on our streets.

After receiving the LA2050 Activation Challenge award, Everyone In has been ramping up efforts to activate local residents around real solutions to end homelessness. Our field organizing campaign is strengthening our work as we partner with more community-based groups, meet with stakeholders, and receive endorsements from local organizations, faith communities, and small businesses. Each week, more people sign up for the campaign by engaging with us online, participating in trainings, and attending town hall meetings. We have invested more resources in canvassing, phone banking, mass texting, and call-in trainings – tightly coordinated with our digital media and engagement strategy.

EVERYONE IN BY THE NUMBERS as of January 31, 2019

Facebook 31,281

Twitter 12,703

Instagram 2,992

Email 25,013

Online petitions signed 12,525

NEARLY DOUBLED SINCE AUGUST 1, 2018

In the inaugural year of the campaign, most of our efforts in siting and approving interim and permanent housing were focused in the City of Los Angeles. Our organizers have been actively building community support around 23 Proposition HHH-funded supportive housing and 12 bridge housing developments. We are also working on an additional five supportive housing developments in L.A. County.

With the support of the Goldhirsh Foundation and LA2050, we are expanding our organizing and advocacy capacity to reach all 88 cities across the County. This is no small feat. To start, we are targeting seven jurisdictions and building strategy based on their current policies on housing, available resources, and public/political support on the ground.

In the first phase of the LA2050 grant, Everyone In set up planning meetings with our partners, Abundant Housing LA and Inner City Law Center to develop a policy and legal approach to streamlining development and preventing homelessness through a “right to counsel" ordinance for tenants facing eviction. The ordinance would guarantee tenants have access to the information and representation they need when faced with landlord harassment, eviction, and other issues. An average of 54,239 unlawful detainer eviction cases have been filed per year over the last three years in Los Angeles County. The 2018 Homeless Count showed over 9,000 people experienced homelessness for the first time based on the combined impacts of evictions and rental housing unaffordability.

BUILDING CAPACITY IN 2019

‣ 10 FIELD ORGANIZERS

‣ NEW DEDICATED ORGANIZER IN LONG BEACH

‣ HIRING AN ORGANIZER IN PASADENA

‣ PARTNER WITH ABUNDANT HOUSING LA AND INNER CITY LAW CENTER

‣ INCREASING EVERYONE IN STAFF

‣ BI-WEEKLY CALL-IN TRAININGS

‣ TWO TRAININGS PER ORGANIZER/MONTH

Upcoming: Long Beach, Pasadena, San Fernando Valley, and Hollywood

In the next six months, we will be creating and executing city-specific strategies that will propose policy improvements to increase the supply of affordable and supportive housing. We will conduct a series of workshops to educate elected offices, stakeholders, and residents on policy recommendations that can be made to address homelessness and prevention in each jurisdiction. From there, we will coordinate with the Everyone In organizer team to begin mobilizing the community support necessary to site housing and pass new policies.

Written by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and provided to LA2050 as part of its mid-year report.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence is proud to report on the Combating Crime Guns Initiative (CCGI): Los Angeles. Our Combating Crime Guns Initiative (CCGI) is a multi-pronged strategy to stem the flow of crime guns into cities that are heavily impacted by gun violence. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF), 90% of crime guns (firearms that are illegally possessed, used in a crime, or suspected to have been used in a crime) are sold by just 5% of gun dealers. Through CCGI, we are working to identify and reform gun dealers who are flooding cities with crime guns.

The Brady Center is partnering with the Goldhirsh Foundation to bring CCGI to Los Angeles and help ensure that in 2050, Los Angelenos of all ages will enjoy safe homes, safe neighborhoods, and safe places to play. Under LA2050's
'Play' goal, we are focusing on two metrics: per capita crime rate, and perceived safety. Both of these are long-term measures, but we are confident in CCGI's ability to impact them over time.

Progress So Far

After the hiring of our Program Manager Steve Lindley, our work in Los Angeles accelerated significantly. Steve is an experienced community liaison with more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement. In the short period of time he's been with us, he's managed to accomplish a tremendous amount of work. During his first month as Program Manager, he met with the Los Angeles Mayor's Office, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles area Brady Chapters to introduce himself and discuss strategies to reduce gun violence in the Los Angeles area.

As a result of these meetings, Steve is now assisting the Mayor's Office and Police Department in drafting three pieces of legislation aimed at providing enhanced oversight of California firearms dealers, mandatory reporting and tracing of law enforcement seized crime guns, and enhancing the gun purchasing public's knowledge of California firearm and firearm safe storage laws. These bills are essential in providing local law enforcement with the ability to effectively engage with the dealers most responsible for the flow of crime guns into Los Angeles.

Steve also met with the Stockton Police Department to discuss crime gun tracing best practices and with the City of San Diego to plan Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) trainings for local law enforcement officials. These meetings helped to establish strategies that can be used in the future when engaging with the LA City Council and law enforcement.

The Brady Center has ties to many local community, faith-based, civic, and academic organizations in Los Angeles, including Women Against Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action, Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los, USC School of Social Work, the UCLA School of Public Health, All Saints Episcopal, Beth Shir Shalom, and First AME. This coalition of Los Angeles community partners has grown since we brought CCGI to Los Angeles. Key new partners include the Youth Council to End Gun Violence, Hope and Heal Fund, and the Urban Peace Institute of LA. These partners are essential to both amplifying our work and activating more individuals in the gun violence prevention movement.

Challenges

Political and legislative restrictions have been a central hurdle. The corporate gun lobby and gun industry have ensured that there are many limitations to local law enforcement's ability to publicly release information on crime gun dealers. Our
legal team has been and will continue to be instrumental in overcoming this challenge.

What's to Come

In the next six months, the Brady Center will work closely with the California Department of Justice and the ATF to obtain crime gun trace data for Los Angeles. We will also be expanding our local coalition through numerous meetings and collaborative community education events. These community education sessions will serve to inform Los Angeles residents about the landscape of crime guns and gun violence in their city and spur grassroots activism within the local gun violence prevention movement.

Additionally, we will continue our work with law enforcement agencies and lawmakers to roll out legislation that will help reduce gun violence. One potential law on the horizon will enforce that all firearms seized from criminals will be entered into the AFS system so that they can be traced back to their source. Once we gain access to Los Angeles gun trace data, our team and our local crime guns partners will share this information with the public and coordinate organized legal and financial pressure against the most notorious California dealers to motivate the reformation of their dangerous business practices.

This is just the beginning. Everyone has a part to play in preventing gun violence in our communities, and we urge Los Angelenos and local community organizations to reach out to Steve Lindley (at
[email protected]) to become part of the solution. Let's play, Los Angeles!

Written by the LA Street Vendor Campaign, a collaboration between ELACC, LURN, LA Food Policy Council, and Public Counsel, and provided to LA2050 as part of their mid-year report.

The second half of 2018 was monumental for the LA Street Vendor Campaign with the LA City Council's historic vote to legalize street vending in the City through a permit process. Just a couple months before the City of LA's vote, Governor Brown signed into law SB946 Safe Sidewalk Vending Act (Lara), which legalized vending statewide. These two significant milestones in the street vending movement came after nearly a decade of advocacy from thousands of street vendors and their supporters.

The impact of this legislation is huge. Over 50,000 street vendors operate in Los Angeles alone, representing a $504 million industry. Approximately 80 percent of street vendors are women of color who contribute to the rich, diverse street food landscape through the informal economy — and when allowed to do their work legally and safely — contribute to the vitality of their neighborhoods and LA as a whole.

The Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign has always been about both protecting the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable workers in the city, and providing them with greater economic opportunity.

Our LA2050 activation has three main pathways to engage over 100,000 Angelenos in supporting a more inclusive economy. 1) dynamic public outreach campaign on social media informing Angelenos about street vending; 2) in person participation at public hearings, events and activities; 3) direct action by participating in a #supportLAstreetvendors #buycott.

We connected the #buycott to Small Business Saturday 2018, engaging 40,879 followers on twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. More than 400 street vendors, allies, and supporters filled the LA City Hall Chamber on November 28th, 2018 for the historic vote and then celebrated on City Hall South's steps, chanting “Si Se Pudo."

However, our journey to build an inclusive economy for our community doesn't end with these monumental wins. We will continue to fight for a City that values and supports street vendors with the best possible policies, and sees them as contributors to the economic and cultural tapestry of Los Angeles.

In 2019, we continue our community organizing with street vendors to ensure the City of Los Angeles permit regulations are fair and inclusive. Efforts will include outreach to vendors across the Los Angeles region to ensure they know their rights under SB946 Safe Sidewalk Vending Act (Lara). Additional goals include incentivizing vendors to sell healthy food in neighborhoods without access to fresh fruits and vegetables and developing a stronger non-profit infrastructure to support merchants, such as partnerships that legitimize vendors within farmer's markets across the City.

We have also begun engaging the local business community. Over the last few months, our team has been working closely with the County Health Department and local manufacturers to design affordable food carts that vendors could use as part of the new regulatory system. We've also been working together with our public sector partners to plan how we can make sure there is a clear pathway for vendors to comply with new “rules and regulations" so they can comfortably enter the formal economy and participate in Los Angeles' economy as important stakeholders. This work will be a priority for 2019. To create a truly inclusive economy, we believe we must work with public, private, and nonprofit partners.

In an era where more of our workforce is in the informal economy with zero protections and safety nets for emergencies, organizing for a street vendor movement is critical to building local solutions that can scale up and reach thousands of precarious workers across Los Angeles and beyond. To learn more about how the informal economy is touching the lives of people in California, check out KCET's City Rising, featuring the LA Street Vendor Campaign.

We're thrilled to share this incredible milestone with everyone involved in the LA2050 Activation Challenge. This grant allows us to activate Angelenos to engage in and build an inclusive economy that supports thousands of workers, whose entrepreneurship contributes to our neighborhood economies and cultural landscape.

Posted
March 1, 2019
by
Center for Innovation in STEM Education (CISE) at CSUDH

Written by CISE and provided to LA2050 as part of its mid-year report.

As part of the LA2050 Activation Challenge, the Center for Innovation in STEM Education (CISE) at CSU Dominguez Hills is empowering teachers and providing dynamic training and mentoring on the state adopted, industry recognized Next Generation Science Standards.

We are pleased to report that the first cohort of 55 teachers were trained in fall 2018. Following is a snapshot of the teachers served:

• 56% of participants were teachers from LAUSD.

• 19% of participants were teachers from Compton USD.

• 17% of participants were teachers from Inglewood USD.

• 8% of participants were teachers from other local districts.

• 83% of participants indicated that they had been teaching for three or more years.

• 51% of participants taught multiple subjects.

• 40% of participants taught science.

• 9% of participants taught mathematics.

The CISE team has met several project goals in the first six months of the grant implementation. The team recruited teachers, held a Kick-Off event, completed training for the first cohort of NGSS Super Training, and conducted classroom observation and Lesson Study Cycles. One of the primary focuses of the training was establishing the foundation for the Next Generation Science standards. Participants learned about NGSS, Performance Expectations (PE), Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), and Cross-Cutting Concepts (CCCS), and how they compare to the previous set of standards. Teachers then explored how three-dimensional learning better prepares students for college and career readiness.

NGSS Super Training participants were also offered the opportunity to obtain the Beginner Level Certification in Fabrication Technology which certifies teachers as "basic," "proficient," and "advanced" in the use of fabrication laboratory equipment for curriculum design and delivery. Every participant was successful at meeting the requirements for the Beginner Fabrication Technology Certification.

Prior to the classroom observations, an NGSS expert met with teachers to agree on the observation focus and review the lesson plan; the NGSS expert reviewed and documented evidence of good teaching practices, and provided formal feedback. During the Lesson Study Cycles, teams of teacher trainees engaged in collaborative planning-teaching-observation of learning, followed by lesson evaluation and refinement.

Based on a survey administered as a follow-up to the training, participants found the training to be a valuable experience. Each teacher had an opportunity to demonstrate mastery and an ability to integrate the Next Generation Science Standards and the Fabrication Technology into a unit of instruction, which was submitted into a shared Google Drive folder.

We are excited to report:

• 100% of those that completed the training stated that they will be able to facilitate at least 1 NGSS Professional Development at their school site, for colleagues, after completing the NGSS Super Training.

• 63% increase in the number of participants who felt comfortable or very comfortable operating the 3D printer from the first to the final day.

• 67% increase in the comfort levels for the number of participants who felt comfortable or very comfortable operating the vinyl cutters from the first to the final day.

• 86% of participants indicated that they would be interested in receiving additional certification if provided the opportunity.

• 100% of participants indicated that they would recommend this training series to other teachers.

Overall, those that completed the training acquired the knowledge about NGSS, thus contributing to the national effort as well as our local effort to implement the new standards one school at a time. We are currently in the training evaluation and revision phase of the project and participants for Cohort Two are being recruited for training during the March - May 2019 cycle.

Recruiting Cohort One was somewhat challenging due to the short timeline for recruitment. However, once the recruitment phase ended, over 90 teachers expressed an interest in participating and 55 were selected and completed the entire training, thus exceeding the target number set for Cohort One by five teachers. Based on the success with the first cohort and their enthusiasm about the training, our team is confident about being able to meet the target number for Cohort Two and will make the necessary adjustments to some parts of the program based on feedback from all involved.

While we are still a few years away from being able to measure and evaluate the impact on college and community college completion and matriculation rates, we feel confident about the impact our program has had on increasing students' immersion in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Each of the 55 teachers who completed our program teaches about 150 students each year, impacting over 8,000 students per year. Over five years, these 55 teachers will reach 40,000 students! That means 40,000 more students excited and inspired about STEM and fabrication technology. That's 40,000 more individuals who will contribute to making Los Angeles not just a better place, but the best place to learn, create, play, connect, and live by the year 2050!

LA2050 has a new resource for anyone looking for ways to do good in Los Angeles. The My LA2050 Ideas Archive launched its beta version October 2018 with a searchable website of organizations, projects, and ideas submitted through the past five years of the My LA2050 Challenge.

Since 2013, the My LA2050 Grants Challenge has distributed $5.3 million in grants by asking, “How can we make Los Angeles the best place to live, learn, create, play, and connect?” For each challenge, hundreds of non-profit organizations, government agencies, and private sector firms have answered with innovative ideas.

The website is a collection of information about the organizations, their projects, and in some cases, videos that highlight their work. Users can search by keyword, by issue area, or by goal category.

Searches reveal a list of matching organizations (non-profit, for-profit, and government). On each organization page, users can see pictures, connect with organizations through social media, and find links to get involved. Each page also includes every proposal submitted by the organization to My LA2050 Challenges throughout the years.

We've learned so much about the good work going on in our county that we wanted to share all of these organizations and projects with the public. We hope people will use it to find volunteer opportunities, potential partnerships, and causes they care about.

Through the My LA2050 Grants Challenges, we have gotten to be a part of some truly amazing work here in LA. Over the past few months, we've taken the time to highlight some of this work and some of the winners in our newsletter. Our grantees shared some of their highs and lows since their big My LA2050 wins, and they were just too good not to share twice.

CicLAvia, 2013 Winner

CicLAvia closes streets to cars for a day, and opens them to the community to gather together and bike, skateboard, run, dance, or simply wander. Their latest event on September 30th,
Celebrate LA!: LA Phil 100 x CicLAvia, marked the 27th CicLAvia since 2010. In that time, more than 1.6 million people have participated in CicLAvia, which has covered more than 180 miles of LA's streets. CicLAvia is fueling a transformation across the region by inspiring more people to reimagine urban life without a car, and improving personal health and quality of life. More than 50 percent of participants in a recent survey said that they would be inactive if not for CicLAvia. On event days, local air quality improves by 50 percent and Metro ridership increases by 30 percent. As a result, the region has become increasingly connected by public transportation, bike lanes, and pedestrian centers.

MoveLA, 2014 Winner

After winning the 2014 My LA2050 Grants Challenge, Move LA was instrumental in the passing of Measure M. (If you don't know, Measure M provides $140 billion over 40 years to build out LA County's transit system.) The My LA2050 grant helped build Move LA's social media and communications capacity, which was integral to the Measure M victory. Now, Move LA is gearing up to electrify the Metrolink commuter rail system, which serves four major counties in SoCal. Move LA is also working to modernize its goods movement system so as to #dumpdiesel and conquer climate change, while collaborating with the South Coast Air Quality Management District to accelerate the deployment of clean cars and trucks in SoCal. Follow @MoveLA on Twitter and Instagram to stay updated and get involved!

Homeboy Industries, 2013 Winner and 2018 Honorable Mention

This year,
Homeboy Industries is celebrating 30 years of serving the city through radical kinship and by breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty and violence. From the beginning, Homeboy Industries dared to discard the prevailing “tough on crime" approach to be “smart on crime“ - that is, investing in the humanity of healing. Winning the My LA2050 grant in 2013 has allowed Homeboy to serve approximately 8,000 individuals each year, including employing at least 250 previously incarcerated and formerly gang-involved men and women annually in their core paid re-entry program. Last year Homeboy provided more than 700 GED tutoring sessions and 11,800 tattoo removal treatments, saw 76 solar panel program graduates and 118 records expunged, and announced the grand opening of Homeboy Electronics Recycling! (S/o to entrepreneur Kabira Stokes!)

LA Bioscience Hub, 2015 Winner

LA Bioscience Hub just graduated its third cohort of Biotech Leaders Academy students. Biotech Leaders Academy fosters future generations of diverse bioscience entrepreneurs for Los Angeles through its two key components: 1) providing community college students in LA's Eastside with entrepreneurship training; and 2) connecting them to paid industry internships. Almost all program participants are students of color, most of whom are first-generation college students.

Now, LA Bioscience Hub is expanding its programming to work more closely with biotech start-ups, helping them grow in LA and create more opportunities for students from LA community colleges to gain hands-on experience and access new employment opportunities. This October, LA Bioscience Hub brought start-ups together for a workshop to develop their internal capacity for hosting student interns. To learn more or to get involved, head to their
website.

826LA, 2013 Winner

During the 2016-2017 school year,
826LA helped 9,263 students improve their creative and expository writing skills, showcasing their work in publications like
When the Moon is Up and numerous chapbooks. Volunteers donated more than 22,000 hours of their time to make it happen. This summer, students in the Write On! summer camp spent four weeks exploring themes such as Arts and Culture, Nature, STEAM, and Visiting the Future. In the process, they learned to express themselves and describe the world in which they live. As one student wrote, “Not everyone is blinded by the beauty of our city. I won't say it's my cup of Starbucks, but it's the still image I call my life."

City Year LA, 2014 Winner

This year,
City Year Los Angeles embarked on its second decade of service to the students of Watts, South L.A., Boyle Heights, Pico Union, and Westlake. Over the last 11 years, City Year Los Angeles has called on nearly 2,800 diverse AmeriCorps members to help thousands of students stay in school and on track to graduate, college and career ready. City Year AmeriCorps members work side-by-side with teachers and develop transformational relationships with students to help them succeed.

Since winning the My LA2050 Grants Challenge in 2014, City Year Los Angeles has deployed 1,140 AmeriCorps members to serve nearly 2 million hours as full-time tutors, mentors, and role models in Los Angeles Unified schools. City Year Los Angeles graduates continue to strengthen the city's workforce by entering various fields including social work, medicine, education, and non-profit work.

AltaSea, 2016 Winner

AltaSea is transforming 35 acres in the oldest part of the Los Angeles harbor into a center for ocean-focused research, STEM education, and sustainable business incubation. Their LA2050 grant helped form the L.A. Waterfront STEM Network, which provides ocean-focused education to middle school students, inspiring them to champion sustainable uses of our oceans.

Alta Sea has had an eventful year:

Hosting the crew of "The Swim" as they prepared for Ben Lecomte's audacious attempt to swim 5,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean. Ben's swim from Tokyo to San Francisco through the Great Garbage Patch of the North Pacific is designed to raise awareness about plastics pollution. He and his crew also raised money for AltaSea, while conducting thousands of tests for NASA and NOAA research projects.

Launching a six-week pilot program with the Boys and Girls Clubs of LA Harbor to educate students on sustainable aquaculture and underwater robotics.

We're so proud of the work our grantees have done to make LA the best place to connect, live, create, learn, and play. This is just the beginning. Subscribe to our newsletter
here to catch more updates as the year progresses, and let's get to work!

As you may recall, we announced the five winners of the 2018 My LA2050 Activation Challenge back in July. We're so proud of the winners and even more appreciative to everyone who submitted their proposals to the grants challenge. In fact, we saw so many bright ideas come through that we decided we had to do more.

This year, we're mixing things up and awarding 10 additional $35,000 grants to what we're calling the 2018 My LA2050 Honorable Mentions. These organizations inspired and excited us with their vision and dedication to making LA the best place to live, play, connect, create, and learn. So much so, that we decided giving away $1,000,000 dollars just wasn't enough!

The My LA2050 Honorable Mentions are being recognized for their inspiring engagement tactics, outside-the-box thinking, and perseverance. You can click each organization's graphic to link to their innovative activation proposals and read more info about their work!

Following their mantra of “Neither food nor people should ever go to waste," L.A. Kitchen reclaims healthy and local food, trains unemployed men and women in the culinary arts, and distributes healthy meals to Angelenos all while tackling the cycle of poverty. They will be sharing the grant with Our Foods and Root Down LA, two non-profits also focused on urban agriculture in South LA.

One Degree is a technology driven nonprofit organization that helps low-income families access the resources they need to achieve social and economic mobility and, ultimately, improve their lives. Thousands in the Bay Area and Los Angeles rely on One Degree's platforms to access health care, food banks, employment services, and much more.

Homeboy Industries primarily serves formerly incarcerated or gang-affiliated men and women through gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry support. The program provides employment for more than 200 individuals and offers parenting classes, workforce development trainings, and tattoo removal.

YPI takes a holistic approach to breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty through high-quality education, workforce training, and service provision for high-need communities. They readily commit to families and recognize the need for long-term investment “from cradle to college and career."

Understanding that families can't get ahead in life if they can't get around, Investing in Place works with diverse stakeholders to support transportation investments that strengthen all communities. This is accomplished through advocacy, research, capacity building, and cross-sector partnerships.

Make it in LA unleashes the creative potential of LA's makers, innovators, and entrepreneurs through educational programming, engaging online content, community events, as well as technical assistance and manufacturing advice for emerging businesses.

Harlem Lacrosse empowers students who are most at-risk of dropping out by engaging them through lacrosse. Students benefit from the discipline, camaraderie, and sense of community that come from belonging to a team. Harlem Lacrosse also provides wrap-around services including mentorship and full-time on-campus staff to meet the academic and emotional needs of students.

Alzheimer's is the sixth leading cause of death in the US. The Youth Movement Against Alzheimer's equips the next generation with the knowledge and passion necessary to eradicate the disease through research grants, student-led advocacy groups, intergenerational respite caregiving, and by establishing student advocacy groups on college campuses.

People for Parks aims to create easy access to safe and quality play spaces in underserved communities around Los Angeles. By training communities to advocate for themselves and their children and by advancing local joint-use policies, People for Parks hopes to create a Los Angeles in which every family has a safe park within walking distance.

It's difficult for children to thrive without advocates. Children Now is the hub that unites children's advocacy groups across California. They work with policymakers and influential leaders throughout the state to craft, promote, enact and implement scalable change for kids.

Head over to their My LA2050 Activation Challenge pages for more information on their mission and vision, as well as opportunities to get involved. Thanks to our extraordinary My LA2050 Honorable Mention grantees for making LA the best place to live, learn, connect, play, and create. We're glad to have you on board.

You can connect with LA2050 by signing up for the newsletter at la2050.org. You can follow LA2050 on facebook.com/LA2050 and on Twitter @LA2050.

LA2050 announces $1,000,000 in grants to five winners of the My LA2050 Grants Challenge to #ActivateforLA

Today, the Goldhirsh Foundation has announced the winners of the 2018 My LA2050 Activation Challenge, an open call for ideas designed to activate 100,000 Angelenos to make LA the best place to learn, create, play, connect, and live. A total of $1,000,000 will be awarded evenly among the five selected organizations to carry out their proposals over the next two years. Each organization will receive $200,000 and partnership from LA2050 in support of its efforts. The My LA2050 Grants Challenge is part of LA2050's effort to drive progress toward a shared vision of success for Los Angeles.

The winning proposals reflect conversations occurring at both national and local levels about timely topics such as refugee resettlement, gun safety, homelessness, STEM learning, and inclusive entrepreneurship. “We are inspired by the projects selected for grants this year," said Goldhirsh Foundation president, Tara Roth. “These proposals address issues of national import with impact at a local level. They are introducing creative solutions for community change by tapping into the collective efforts of Angelenos."

Additionally, the Goldhirsh Foundation is delighted to partner with the Annenberg Foundation for the fourth year in the My LA2050 Grants Challenge. The Annenberg Foundation will provide each winner with an additional $25,000 grant to support the organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

The winners of the My LA2050 Activation Challenge are:

LEARN

Center for Innovation in STEM Education (CISE): The Center for Innovation in STEM Education (CISE) will empower teachers to instruct and inspire students in STEM via a dynamic training and mentoring program. Teachers in LAUSD-Local District South and Compton USD will be trained and equipped to implement the Next Generation Science Standards and prepare their students for the jobs of the future.

CREATE

ELACC + LA Street Vendors Coalition: After winning a 10-year fight for the legalization of street vending in LA, the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign will continue to activate vendors, small businesses, policy makers, and food lovers across our city in the creation of an equitable economy inclusive of micro-entrepreneurs. Through this activation, they will grow security and opportunity for an innovative industry that contributes to LA's vibrant food culture and economy.

PLAY

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence: The Brady Center is establishing a coalition that will build public, legal, and economic pressure to reform or shut down “bad apple gun dealers," and make an impact on two of LA2050's key metrics - per capita crime rates and perceived safety. With this campaign, they will activate Angelenos to take meaningful action to reduce gun violence and increase public safety.

CONNECT

Miry's List: In partnership with EmpowerLA, Miry's List will activate individuals across LA to make their neighborhoods more welcoming to new arrival refugee families through volunteerism and engagement with Neighborhood Councils. Miry's List believes that supporting new refugee families in the process of resettlement softens their transition and leads to more compassionate and engaged communities.

LIVE

United Way of Greater Los Angeles: Through their #EveryoneIn campaign, United Way of Greater Los Angeles will activate 100,000 Angelenos to connect the dots between housing affordability and homelessness. #EveryoneIn will empower participants to say “yes" to supportive housing, the preservation of existing housing, and the creation of new affordable housing.

You can connect with LA2050 by signing up for the newsletter at la2050.org. You can follow LA2050 on facebook.com/LA2050 and on Twitter @LA2050.

The Goldhirsh Foundation seeks public input to determine winners of the My LA2050 Activation Challenge. Public voting begins today.

Starting today, Angelenos can cast their vote to determine who will win the 2018 My LA2050 Activation Challenge, an open call for ideas that will activate 100,000 Angelenos to make LA the best place to learn, create, play, connect, and live. A total of $1,000,000 will be awarded among five organizations to carry out their proposal. Each organization will receive a total of $200,000 (over two years) and partnership from LA2050 in support of their efforts.

Five finalists have been selected in each LA2050 goal category that will engage Angelenos to make a specific, tangible impact by 2020. The Goldhirsh Foundation's finalists for the My LA2050 Activation Challenge are:

Public voting will close June 29th, and winners will be announced on July 9th.

To stay updated on the challenge and to be notified when the winners are announced, you can follow LA2050 on facebook.com/LA2050 and on Twitter @LA2050, and connect with the challenge on Twitter using #ActivateforLA.

Congratulations to our top 25 finalists of the My LA2050 Activation Challenge! Earlier this year, we put out an open call for ideas that will activate 100,000 Angelenos to make LA the best place to learn, create, play, connect, and live.

One winner will be chosen among the top five in each goal category based on the results of public voting. Each winning organization will receive a total of $200,000 (over two years) and a partnership from LA2050 to execute their proposal. Voting begins on June 19, 9am PT and will continue until June 29, 5pm PT.

The 2018 My LA2050 Activation Challenge winners will be announced on July 9, so stay tuned!

Here's to you LA! Thank you for inspiring us with so many innovative ideas to #ActivateforLA.